


The Nature of Things

by jennygotfamous



Series: The Nature of Things [1]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-10 22:59:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18417638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jennygotfamous/pseuds/jennygotfamous
Summary: Xander has never forgotten exactly what Spike is, and that changes absolutely nothing.





	1. Xander: The Nature of Things

If anyone ever asked I’d lie and say I didn’t know when it started. Fein stupidity and they’d buy it, because if there is one thing I’m good at, it’s being donut boy. I don’t see it as a bad thing, mostly it just is. In this case it comes in handy. Then again, the likelihood of someone asking when I started sleeping with Spike is about as likely as someone asking me when I’d started spending the weekends in drag. Only, y’know, I’ve never done the drag thing.   
  
We don’t have romance and flowers and things that made girls go goo-goo-eyed for all those guys on a first name basis with their hairdresser. If I’m being honest we barely have friendship. Mostly it’s just mind-bendingly good sex. I kind of like it that to be honest. There’s no confusion, no expectations and I’m a definite fan of the lack of expectation.   
  
So the whole guy thing took a little getting used to, but there’s something to be said for someone who has spent as long as Spike has learning what he likes. Especially when his parts and my parts are the same. So yeah, we tolerate each other, and when we aren’t flinging insults we’re making with the wild monkey love. I never said it makes sense, but there it is.   
  
While I may be sleeping with the bleached menace, I’m not stupid. I know what he is, and what I am. Which is why I’m in no way surprised when he betrayed us to Adam. Not that I’m ever going to tell anyone, but the sex after that whole debacle was over was something out of this world. Nothing like the angry mumbo, I tell you.   
  
Willow’s kicked puppy look had me wondering just how quickly we Scoobies tend to forget the nature of things, especially when it comes to Spike. I’m not saying I wasn’t angry over the whole sell-out-the-good-guys plan, but I would have been surprised if he  _didn’t_ try it. I may like the side effects of the chip, mostly the Xander’s-still-alive one, but that piece of silicone and metal is unnatural. I don’t blame him for trying to get it out.   
  
I’m not sure what makes me tell him that, probably the fact that the rest of the gang have just about put him on their “kill on sight” list and I know he feels a little down about that, and about the fact that at the end of his latest master plan, he still has the chip. We’re not friends, but a man can’t get laid if the other half of this freaky twosome is sulking in a corner.   
  
“Don’t blame you.” I’m not surprised when he doesn’t seem to hear me; he’s got a good sulk going.   
  
“Course you bloody don’t, I’m a demon.” The pause before he answers is so long I’ve almost forgotten I said anything in the first place.   
  
“I know. I’ve never forgotten that.” And for some reason I’m not going to look at too closely, that seems to cheer him up.   
  
Then I watch that slight smile turn into a sneer and can almost feel the insult colour the air before he speaks, one hand cupping his crotch like the obscenity of it is going to offend me, “Like getting your hands dirty with a demon, Harris? That what this is all about?”  
  
It always comes back to this. Spike throwing his nature in my face like it’s somehow going to change… something. I don’t really know what he’s trying to prove whenever we come to this topic, since I can honestly say I’ve never forgotten what he is, and the blatant sexual overtones are pretty much just hot.   
  
So I say as much – ignoring the sexual innuendo – for what feels like the hundredth time since this whole thing started so many months ago, “I’ve never forgotten what, or who, you are, Spike.”  
  
Normally, that would be the end of the argument. He’d curl his tongue behind his teeth, grab me with one hand behind my head and the other in my belt loops and off we’d go again. This time though, his eyes sharpen into something that makes me unconsciously take a step back.  
  
“It’s not the demon factor then hmm? What is it? Getting off on fucking someone who can’t defend themselves?” And this line isn’t brought out often, but I’ve seen it before.  
  
“You can say no, Spike. And you know I’d listen if you did. We may not be bosom buddies, but I’m not about to force myself on you.” Clearly the logical argument train of thought is just pissing him off, since his eyes have a gleam in them I’ve never seen before and I take another step back. This is not how these arguments usually play out. Normally we’re half way to naked by now and I’m concerned by the change in the script.   
  
“So that’s it, is it? Too much of a nancy to try and find yourself a bloke the old fashioned way. And why bother when you have a perfectly good one lying around.” He’s almost vibrating with tension and I realise I’m so far in the deep end I don’t even know which way is up anymore.   
  
“What are you talking about bleach?” I asked, forced casual and yeah, it’s transparent but I’m worried.   
  
“Didn’t answer me, Harris. You working through some belated Boy Scout fantasy? Had enough of cheerleaders so thought you’d try for the wrestling team and I’m just the Big Bad to give you a taste, hmm?” Clearly I’ve spent too much time around him, since that step into insanity almost made sense.  
  
“I don’t fuck men Spike, I don’t intend to start fucking men. I just fuck you.” Yeah, it’s blunt, but since boy wonder here seems to be sliding the slippery slope into freaking me the hell out, anything to diffuse the tension is of the good right now.   
  
Clearly something of that sentence gets to him, since he pauses from where I’ve only just realised he’s started stalking me across the room, cocking his head. And I realise there’s something almost… vulnerable in his eyes. Ok, maybe we are friends, since I’m suddenly worried about his stupid self.   
  
Inching towards him the same way I see people try to get close to wounded animals, I hold my hand out and very carefully don’t flinch when he glares at it.   
  
“I’ve never forgotten what you are Spike. You’re a demon, and you saw a way to get the chip out. I would have been surprised if you didn’t try to work a deal with Adam. Buffy and the others… they… they tend to think that co-operation and friendship mean the same thing.” I have no clue what I’m trying to do, other than take that look out of his eyes that reminds me of a tiger I once saw at the zoo, pacing constantly up and down the fence line with eyes as empty as the savannah.   
  
He’s passive when I reach him, but for blue eyes staring balefully at me. I mirror our normal routine, one hand cupping the back of his head, the other curling into his belt loops. I don’t kiss him, just hold his face close to mine and breathe warm air across his lips.   
  
“Show me.” I’m pretty damn sure my sanity has left the state when the face reforms in a ripple like water and I’m staring into yellow eyes.   
  
I keep looking as I push him down onto the folded out couch, trying very hard not to treat him like the spun glass I’m suddenly reminded of. Deliberately I rake nails down his forearms, reminding myself as much as him that I know what he is. I try to ignore the way his answering growl clenches my stomach.    
  
Pressing thin wrists into the worn bedding I can’t help but notice how well we work together like this. I ask without words whether he needs me to tie his hands to keep them in place. His answer is also wordless; barely twitching when I release the limbs and pull his shirt from those incredibly tight pants.  
  
This isn’t how things normally go. None of this is normal. But something in me tells me that this is what he needs. His clothes are stripped off with bites hard enough to leave teeth marks for the amount of time it takes me to get him naked. Mine go… somewhere. I don’t quite remember taking them off, but I must have since there they are, on the floor.  
  
The bites I put on his skin as I make my way up his body are hard enough that I’d never try them on a human. Normally I’d never try them on him either, but when the first one has him arching his spine like a bow, I can’t resist. Xander see a button, Xander push a button. The one to his throat may have been excessive, since it’s already an angry purple bruise when I pull away, but his eyes are staring at me like I’m God.   
  
I can’t help but shudder at the sight of him, bound by nothing more than my request and his own choice, looking at me with yellow eyes like I have the answers to everything. I push down the panic I can feel growing in response to the look on his face and shift my hips instead. This time the growl really does make me shiver, and yellow eyes narrow at the knowledge.   
  
His hands stay where I’ve put them but his hips are moving in an unmistakable pattern of “I know I’m sex on legs and I know you want me”. I’m so far past denying it I just bite down on the other side of his neck and ride the sudden kick of his pelvis back down.   
  
“I know what you are, Spike.” I whisper the words in his ear, grinning at the shiver the warm air produces.   
  
He doesn’t answer me but his hips slow slightly and I know he’s listening.   
  
“I know you’re a demon, a vampire.” I can feel him stifle the shiver this time, and nip his neck again in retaliation for his sudden self-control, shifting my hips until his legs are on either side of mine, calves sliding up my thighs to find just the right angle for the rasp of skin on skin.   
  
He must have moved an arm since there’s suddenly a familiar tube being pressed into my hand and those yellow eyes are daring me to say something about it. I grin and bite his lip instead. Too hard for a human but just right for a vampire, who’s suddenly arching up and pressing down and I have to use my free hand to hold his hips still.   
  
I want to take longer, something that has nothing to do with vampire or human and everything to do with my concern for the person in bed with me, but his eyes are a challenge, his heels in the backs of my thighs a demand. He growls again, a long sound on the slow glide. I know it’s deliberate when his face flashes victory at the sudden buck of my hips. I can feel my own narrow in response.  
  
I press him into the bed with the weight of me in him, holding him there only because he allows himself to be held.   
  
Another bite to his neck, hard enough that he almost bucks me off, a single pant giving lie to the affected expression of nonchalance that would look ridiculous on anyone else given the current situation. On him it just makes me bear down with teeth and hips again.   
  
We’re both panting slightly when I press my lips against his ear again, “You’re a vampire, Spike; a fighter. I’ve watched you tear a demon limb from limb and come away looking bloody and glorious. I’ve seen you sink your teeth into a demon and pull flesh from its bones in pieces bigger than my hands.”  
  
I’m well aware I am a unique kind of sick since Spike isn’t the only one who’s getting off on the play by play of some of his gorier battles, but I ignore that in favour of a slow twist. I can feel him cresting the edge, holding on but only barely. One of my hands goes to his hips, changing the angle just enough that his eyes widen and his gaze snaps to stare right through me.   
  
“I have never forgotten what you are.” I hadn’t meant to it come out sounding so much like a promise but suddenly it’s too late since his hands are on my hips, directing me with enough force I know there will be bruises. He’s stretched out like an offering, his back barely on the bed.    
  
One more bite just below his ear and he’s rippling around me, yellow eyes wide. I don’t remember much of the next couple of minutes but when I come to his legs are still around my hips, and one of his hands is wrapped in my hair, holding me in place with my face against his neck.   
  
The skin there is still a livid purple and I lick it on impulse, feeling the shudder go right through him. This time the lick gets a smaller, but no less all encompassing shiver and I try to ignore the feeling growing in the pit of my gut that tells me we passed “barely friends who have sex” territory a while back. Somewhere along the line we've moved into something far more complicated. 


	2. Spike: The Demon in Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is The Nature of Things told from Spike's POV

There’s a demon in me.   
  
These children throw the word around with far too much authority for their so very small shoes. Playing an elaborate version of cops and robbers with musty old books to give them wisdom, or whatever it is they’re trying to find in the tomes. I watch them point infant fingers with absolute conviction in their voices and announce that blood means demon. They have no real understanding and their wilful ignorance sets my teeth on edge. I find myself trying hard not to scream in their amateur, naïve faces.  They have no bloody idea; couldn’t even hope to grasp what it means to be Demon.   
  
There’s a small ball of self-hatred in the pit of my stomach that grows watching this misfit group of nothings pretend to save the world. Because while they’re out defending the honour of kittens and rainbows I’m depending on them for my mug of pigs blood a day and the luxury of having the chains taken out of my bathroom accommodation.  
  
The move to Harris’ flat is a nice one and the self-hatred expands. Pathetic excuse for a vampire. But I haven’t survived this long without getting use to the taste of crow, so I play nice,  _adapt_ , and imagine what it would be like to rip their little spines out.  
  
Shagging the boy is a pleasant interlude. He’s all heat and sunshine and everlasting optimism so strong I can feel it in the back of my throat like paint fumes whenever I’m around him for more than half an hour. The longer it goes on the more I realise he’s coffee; diluted and sweetened for his merry band, but rich and bitter with real life when there’s no one but me to see. He’s stronger than they think, those wide unblinking eyes seeing more than even I imagined. It’ll get him in trouble one of these days. For now it just makes me want to burrow my way under his skin until I can feel the rawness of him soaking into me.   
  
Something sharp and wicked in me sneers at the betrayal on their faces when they finally figure out Adam’s plan, and my part in it. The little witch’s startled face makes me bare my teeth. I can almost see the hurt hanging above their heads like another face, accusing me of imaged disloyalty because they thought I was some domesticated pet now that they’d fed me and I hadn’t killed them. I find myself refusing to look at the boy.  
  
There’s a quiet voice in the back of my mind telling me that some small part of me sees it as a betrayal too. They didn’t need to feed me and keep me alive when I was so pathetic I would have dusted myself if I’d seen me on the street. The sneer is only half directed at them now, the rest of it aimed solidly at that small voice until it curls up back in some dark corner where it belongs.  
  
I’m not quite sure when we ended up back at the boy’s flat but he’s staring at me with a look I’ve never seen on him before. Understanding and acceptance wrapped up in… something I don’t like the look of. More years of self-preservation than the child in front of me can ever hope to see has me looking away from whatever it is.  
  
When he finally speaks it’s not the sharp barbs of blame and recrimination I’m expecting. It takes me a moment to think through the words, and longer still to figure out that he really believes it. But self-preservation is a tenacious beast and I learnt a long time ago that what people believe one moment is not necessarily what they believe the next.   
  
When the man-child in front of me agrees with the glib line I threw at him in response I have to stop a moment, wondering if the boy was looking at things slightly sideways in that way of his that always made me pause. The sneer starts off internal and slides its way onto my lips, widening when I hear his heart do a little  _thuthud-THUD_  in his chest. Suddenly I’m on familiar ground again, practiced hands making blunt statements with the front of my jeans and tongue forming words just as brusque to frame them.  
  
But he’s not playing the game right; his eyes are a little too honest and the deliciously foul words we share in the dark are threatening to turn into something more substantial, “I’ve never forgotten what, or who, you are, Spike.”  
  
So I cut the words to pieces, watching him defend himself against things I’ve said before but still make him stutter on the thinking of them, just the tiniest bit. I can see him forming the phrases carefully in his mind before they make it past his lips. The retort is dusty with disuse but familiar and I’m more interested in seeing that mouth open in surprise when he finally figures out what he’s been messing with all this time. There’s a demon in me boy, remember?  
  
 Somewhere along the line the boy in front of me became a little bit more of a man and he doesn’t even stumble when he looks me in the eye, “I don’t fuck men Spike, I don’t intend to start fucking men. I just fuck you.”  
  
I have to give him points for playing the adult. One of us has to, since there’s an itch under my skin that reminds me of the feeling I get right before dawn and it’s driving me barmy. But there’s something in the way he shapes the words that makes me think he’s not playing and maybe he really has grown up, just enough to understand whatever-this-is that’s sending me crazy.   
  
There’s an epiphany in his eyes, a dawning something that I want to hold onto, even though I know it would burn the flesh right from my bones. And he’s talking again, making more sense than either of us have in a long time. I don’t pretend to know the why of it, just let him talk and inch closer. I want to snarl that I’m not an animal, I’m a demon and why does no one understand the sodding difference but then he’s got one hand behind my head and I swear those fingers will leave a brand from all that heat he’s giving off.   
  
He breathes the request across my lips, and suddenly I think that maybe this boy has more of a clue than the rest of that pathetic lot put together, “Show me.”  
  
He doesn’t so much as pause when demon features come forward, just keeps looking like nothing happened. I feel can feel an odd twist in my stomach replace the familiar self-hatred at the lack of reaction. When he lays me down on the sorry excuse for a bed I’m about to call it quits, because he’s treating me like something small and breakable. Then his nails scrape my skin, hard enough to leave welts in the flesh, though not hard enough for them to stay past them time it takes him to slide his hands back up to my wrists.   
  
There’s something in his face now. Something that says maybe I underestimated this man in boy’s clothing. His eyes are dark and focused, so unlike any of my other lovers I could never get lost in the moment and forget whose flesh it was against mine. This boy, without even realising it, demands focus, pulls it from my very marrow.   
  
There’s a question, asked and answered with silence and acquiescent limbs. When small white teeth make themselves known along my side there’s no thought, just instant movement towards  _more_ and  _yes_ and  _you really do get it don’t you, you young-old child of an ancient_.  
  
The shifting of legs is instinctual, calling like to like as the dawning realisation of….  _something_ shatters the self-hatred I’ve carried for months with barely a ripple. Words and heat are blooming in panted breaths across my neck as he whispers a truth I could never ask him for across my skin. I need to know, with more than words, and there’s almost no pause when I find and push the lube into his hand.   
  
I can see him hesitate for a moment, and push him harder, wanting more, wanting now. I can see the understanding in his face too; the promise of something selfless. Only this boy could understand selfless violence. I’m caught in the words his hips are saying for him, the hard push-pull that would leave almost imperceptible tears in a human’s flesh but just make me want him all the more.   
  
His face is intent as he looks at me and the worry of giving away more than I’m willing has me struggling for detachment, though the sudden bite he marks my neck with – hard enough to tell me in no uncertain terms he knows exactly what he has in his bed – makes it hard to ride the sensations easily.   
  
I can hear him speaking now, words I’ve heard in various tones but never like this. Never raspy and sounding like the thrum of blood soaked silk, “You’re a vampire, Spike; a fighter. I’ve watched you tear a demon limb from limb and come away looking bloody and glorious. I’ve seen you sink your teeth into a demon and pull flesh from its bones in pieces bigger than my hands.”  
  
This magnificent child, with guileless eyes and a hunch he only loses when I’m hip to hip with him, demanding all he can give me, has me trapped. I no longer care about whatever point I was trying to make, what gnawing gnat of a thought started this convoluted trip into something so far removed from anything we’re familiar with. All I care about is the beat of his heart that I can feel all the way up into my throat and the slight sheen of sweat he’s rubbing into me with every movement.    
  
This boy – who feels like coffee and tastes like sunshine, and shows me with each twisting grind of his hips just how much he sees – has changed something between us. I’m not sure if it’s the last twist or the blunt, forceful teeth in my neck that push me over but I’m sightless; caught in his demand. When he freezes, face slack jawed with the surprise of pleasure, he stares straight at me.


End file.
